Israel is holding missing Gaza engineer

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JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Gaza electric power plant engineer who had gone missing in Ukraine was arrested by Israel and is being held there.

The news on Palestinian Gaza resident Dirar Abu Sisi came to light Sunday after a gag order on the case was partially lifted by an Israeli court.

Sisi was reported missing a month ago after he boarded a Kiev-bound train in Kharkov on Feb. 19. His wife said shortly afterward that he had been kidnapped by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. She also has alleged that Israel is holding her husband in order to gain information about the Gaza electric power plant where he worked as a senior manager in order to sabotage it, according to Haaretz.

A judge ordered the gag order to be lifted after a petition was filed in the Petach Tikvah Magistrates Court by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The judge ruled, however, that "the publication of the details of the investigation and the circumstances of the arrest are forbidden, at this point, for an additional 30 days."

Sisi, 42, reportedly was visiting Ukraine with his Ukraine-born wife and their six children in order to apply for Ukrainian citizenship.
 

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